The sunset on Palmyra ruins kept its promise and I’m up very early the following day to attend the return of the first rays, on this 3rd of July. The sky is still very clear but the day star appears from behind the palm grove and the shadow phenomenon doesn’t take place again. Before taking a coach back to Damascus, I’ve plenty of time to go all over the antique city again and to admire it in the morning light.

The funerary temple stands at the great colonnade west end, where the sun disappears every evening. But the façade looks eastwards and gets the first morning beams. On its hill, the Arabian castle watches these solitudes laden with history and mystery.

During the day, I go back to Damascus and I hear that hostilities have started again in Beyrouth. I go to the office that delivers the exit visas. The stamp won’t be easy to get. The official asks me a lot of questions and tells me that I’ll get that visa later and that I’ll have to come here in a few days again. I explain to him that some people are waiting for me in Beyrouth and that I have a plane to catch afterwards. I try to conceal my irritation, and after pretty long conversations, I obtain the essential stamp.

The cost of living is not high in Syria, markedly lower than in Lebanon. While I’m having a meal in a small restaurant in the capital, I read the surprisingly low prices written on the menu and I ask the waiter whether it’s really what I think, whether everything is included, etc. He answers me: ‘Yes, but you can pay more if you like it’. I spend a second night in a hotel in Damascus. On the 4th of July, I go and see theUmayyad mosque again, in the morning sun. You can see the Dome of the Treasury (above), from the VIIIth century.

At the beginning of the afternoon, I take a collective taxi for Beyrouth. At the border, the customs officers make me get out, only me, and examine my passport. I can still remember the official now in 2011, at the other side of a counter in a kind of site office, knocking my passport against the board, saying: ‘La Beirut!’ (You’re not going to Beirut!). I have to argue things over again, and to explain myself for a pretty long time: I have to rejoin my family, I can’t sleep here or go back, etc. Above all, I hope the taxi driver won’t abandon me here. But he does not, and everyone is waiting in the vehicle patiently. It reminds me of the Wolisso anecdote (see Part 11). After a rather long time, I’m given my passport back and I’m allowed to leave Syria and to keep going on my way. Phew! Perhaps the colour of my passport saved me: I had a pink official passport, halfway between the ordinary blue one and the green diplomatic passport, which could make matters easier sometimes. I also managed to handle the conversations appropriately: In the Orient, one has to show resolution, patience and politeness, and above all to avoid getting angry.

On our way down to Beirut, I can sight several fires going on in town and on the hills. The passages from the east into town being closed, the taxi driver, who knows his job, makes a large detour southwards and we manage to get to the quieter western quarters. I’m now in the convent again. All the evening, gun fire can be heard and I’m not going to spend a good night. The Sisters, as for them, have had the moral strength and a lot of time to acquire the stoicism they show. Besides, our area is not aimed at, but rather Achrafieh and the other Christian districts in the east of the town. As I suppose French television is going to speak about this situation, I write in the evening to my family to reassure them: ‘To come back to Beirut this afternoon, the collective taxi made a detour because of the unstable situation. The convent quarter is very quiet’. I spend two more whole days in Beirut. On the 6th of July, I buy the newspaper “L’Orient-Le Jour” of which you can see the first page top (above), as evidence about the moment. In this new phase of this muddled conflict, Syrians from the Arab Strike Force especially put pressure on the Libanese Front, which is mainly Christian. Let me translate the first paragraph: ‘OUTBURST OF FURY AT ITS HEIGHT Beyrouth inhabitants had never seen such a thing, even during the worst moments of the two-year war; since the beginning of yesterday’s evening [5 July], the outburst of violence has been at its height in east-Beirut and its outskirts, where guns have been thundering without any respite, unloading hundreds of shells and high-tech projectiles onto the various quarters of this part of the capital city and its suburbs (…). ALL THE [EAST] DISTRICTS ARE SUBJECTED TO A BOMBARDMENT OF UNPRECEDENTED VIOLENCE’.

This recent photo (above) shows, displayed on a postcard I sent to my family at the beginning of my stay, the kind of memento I was able to collect, bending down during my strolls in Beirut streets in those days, at the beginning of July 1978. I remember that finding myself once in an inner yard in the convent, I suddenly heard an exchange of submachine gun fire, in the nearby street. This small yard being overlooked by some windows firing could come from, I thought at once: ‘I had better hide behind a big pillar straight away and wait for quietness to come back’. The Sisters told me that it did happen that stray bullets finished their flight in the convent. Through all that the nuns did for me, I managed to spend a good stay in Lebanon despite the tragic situation of the country. On the 7th of July, after lots of effusions and thanks, I take my leave of the Sisters and I take off for Athens. PART 38